


they have stolen the heart from inside you (but this does not define you)

by gingergenower



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Divergent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I honestly wanted to write fluff but it didn't happen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shock, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: Jyn and Cassian escaped Scarif, and they end up in a rebel base in the middle of nowhere while they collect themselves.They are all stardust.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title is stolen Moana lyrics

Jyn’s sat in a rebel craft that has too much empty space in it. Chirrut could sit next to her, Baze next to him, Bodhi Rook flat on his back on the benches opposite them. He might sleep, or tell Jyn stories about her father- she’d smile or cry later, but when he’d speak she’d listen. Her Papa was a stranger to her but not to Bodhi. K-2SO would be co-pilot.

Now they’re all lost. All she has is silence and a vessel in a sky of stars that are yet to become dust. If Cassian dies, she doesn’t want to know yet.

She’d like some time.

The medic downstairs swears when the ship creaks and sways, but Jyn can hardly acknowledge it. She’s too tired to sleep, too hypersensitive to make any movement that’ll make her think.

The medic sounds angry, not frightened, yelling up that she can’t save Cassian if the pilots can’t keep the ship steady, and one of the pilots shouts back that they’re working with a broken ship. Jyn knows there’s a blaster trained on the Imperial insignia over the medic’s heart, the rebel fighter who pulled it out threatening her when she was already scrambling towards Cassian, telling Jyn to help turn him onto his back. Yet, she doesn’t sound frightened. Jyn wonders what that’s like.

Entering the atmosphere feels like freefalling, but they land safe enough, and Alliance doctors pull Cassian off the ship and out of the medic’s hands before Jyn can unbuckle herself from the seat.

Down in the cargo bay, there are more blasters trained on the medic, soldiers staring at her, the fighter watching, and Jyn stares down the barrels of the blasters as though saving the medic is nothing. It feels like nothing.

“She helped,” Jyn says. She’s only got one body, and a dozen holes riddling it seems like such a burden, but she’s stood between the medic and the blasters and that’s all that really matters.

“She’s-”

“She helped,” she repeats, and she’s quiet like she doesn’t care if she’d heard.

A hand touches Jyn’s waist. “Your man should live,” the medic says.

She nods, but she’s numb to it. It’s like it would take their blasters to touch her, to make her feel something, and Cassian’s words finally ring true. She is in shock.

Someone orders their weapons lowered, and the medic’s taken away. The fighter and Jyn are taken to Mon Mothma and asked for a report. Jyn is forced to speak, but she doesn’t know what she says, only that she’s ushered away when the fighter adds that, as far as he knows, everyone he fought with died.

She doesn’t much remember the next few hours, except that they coax her into taking something that’ll help her sleep.

***

She’s not sure when she wakes, but Cassian’s in the chair at the foot of the bed. He’s strapped up, bruised, and watching her.

“Hello,” he says, coughing into the back of his hand, leaning forward.

“Cassian,” she says.

Resigned, he smiles. “Yes.”

“You’re…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, and he doesn’t ask her to. He watches her, head tilted, and she stares back.

“Why are you stardust?”

“We all are,” she says, sitting up.

He waits, so she tells him. Her father told her the story of a star that exploded, and at the heart of that star, everything that is was barely beginning to form. It created everything around them, all the elements and the planets and the people. You are made of stardust, he told her. All that potential is inside you.

Jyn’s smile drops, and she blinks. “He named that thing after me.”

“He… it helped us find the plans.” He shrugs. “And he might’ve believed in that machine, once. But now his legacy is that name, and you.”

A beat, and her eyes welling up with tears as she flops back into the bed. He lets her cry, takes his time standing up, and walks to her side.

She bites her lip, fighting to reign in her emotions. “Where are we?”

“I’m not sure. A rebel base, somewhere, the medical bay. I didn’t ask too many questions.”

She knows the answer for this. “Who else came back?”

“No one.” Cassian swallows, but is distracted, looking across at the doorway.

“Jyn Erso, am I correct?” A doctor’s stood on her other side.

She nods. 

“You’re free to go. Get plenty of rest, keep hydrated, and you should be fine.”

“Okay.”

The doctor leaves. She doesn’t move, and Cassian looks back down at her. “Do you want to go?”

“Where are we going?”

He shrugs. He knows as little about the base as she does, so he helps her get out of bed and they walk together, aimless. They walk until they tire and they’ve looped around the base twice, and they find someone to ask about sleeping arrangements. Sent to the base coordinator, they find they’ve been assigned temporary accommodation and are given the key to their room.

It’s small and symmetrical. The door shoots upwards and there are a set of cupboards on either side, two beds, and a door at the other end to a bathroom. Standard issue pyjamas are folded up on the pillow and they both shove them aside, dropping onto the beds.

Jyn’s on her back, but Cassian lies on his side, and she realises he’s still watching her.

“You joined this fight when you were six years old.”

“I delivered messages across my city for the Alliance. No one suspected a small child running down the streets.”

“Is it worth dying for?”

He pulls his pillow closer. “I think so. Do you?”

“Yes.” She can still feel his eyes on her when she closes her eyes, too tired to keep them open, but it’s not uncomfortable. It reminds her of her childhood, when isolation was a luxury she didn’t know would become her normality. That feeling, like warmth, sends her to sleep.

***

She drifts back into consciousness an hour or so later, and the light’s switched off. She sits up, and it flicks back on. Cassian’s bed is empty. Setting her feet onto the floor, she realises he took her boots off, refolded her pyjamas and put them at the end of the bed. 

It isn’t that Jyn learnt kindness or generosity was weakness- she never tried them, never wore them to see how they fit. Surviving was the only priority she had, and kindness and generosity didn’t occurred to her. Even in small moments with people she felt could trust, her actions couldn’t be considered kind, only practical.

In his small gestures, Cassian has betrayed himself, and it surprises her. She thought he’d be more careful.

The door to the bathroom opens, and his hair’s wet from a shower, dressed in fresh clothes he must have found in the cupboards. He rubs a towel on his head, and nods towards the door. “If you want.”

She does, not because she wants to but because she knows she should. 

They’ve given her a different shirt, his dark blue- that of a captain, she thinks- but otherwise the same. She comes back out, and he’s putting his boots on.

“Where are you going?”

He shrugs. “I want to do something.”

“Your ribs are broken.”

“I can still talk tactics, help someone fix something,”

“You need to rest.”

He smiles, bitter. “I’ve never been the resting kind.”

Too impulsive, she takes a step forward, right in front of him when he gets to his feet. His hands catch her shoulders, steadying her, but her doesn’t move and stares up at him.

“No.”

He tilts his head, meeting her with a soft, sure gaze. “I need to keep my brain occupied. If I stop moving I’ll start thinking.”

It’s too much. Even mentioning it, it aches in parts of her she didn’t know could feel. “ _Please-_ ”

“Come with me.”

Blinking up at him, she can’t breathe while he tucks stray hair behind her ear.

“Walk. See things. Listen. Have me at your side.”

She nods, once, and he shrugs on his jacket and she grab her boots, and they walk again.

He meets an old friend, introducing Jyn and talking about their past for 20 minutes. He pulls a pilot aside and explains to him a better way to store his equipment, safer for everyone near it. He holds a screwdriver for a mechanic. He’s sent to the squadron leader, who asks his opinion on formation tactics and attacks on Star Destroyers, and they talk about disabling the shields in various different ways for so long Jyn’s sure she falls asleep with her eyes open.

They wander the base until the ships all leave, called to another mission, and he tucks Jyn into his side, arm around her.

“Do you need to eat?”

She doesn’t, but she nods anyway, because he does. The rec’s quiet, but there’s enough noise to fill the space, and Cassian’s bright in watching everyone else in the room.

If they were not here, none of this would change. If they had died on Scarif, everything around them would have still existed, these people would still be laughing and their convictions would have still put them in these seats and the rebellion would continue. Hope does not die with a person, it dies with an idea.

Freedom is not an idea that dies, she thinks, looking across at Cassian. How could it?

**Author's Note:**

> We love you, Space Mom. You made the world a better place and we'll do our best too, in 2017. We have hope; your legacy is stardust.


End file.
